Month: June 2005

I recently walked past a Brooks Brothers store and started laughing at the site of these pants. What kind of a guy buys clothes like this? These are fine on a 2 year old boy dressed up for a Sunday dinner, but for grown men? No.

“I don’t care about the rest of the world… I like little whales printed on my trousers!”

Brooks Brothers’ designers must be living in some strange families if they think their garments are appealing. The colors, cuts and visible distaste for modernity in these clothes is… well, it’s shocking. However, it does help to explain the market for cars like the Buick Le Sabre. The comment element between these Brooks Brothers… um, clothes… (but I’m using the term loosely) and the Buick is some kind of twisted banality that we haven’t seen since the 1950s and possibly also in the mid-1980s.

“Gee, these patchwork trousers will look great with my black dress shoes.”

Design like this is not healthy. It’s not clever, smart or cute. It’s exactly immature and represents an aversion to change that screams “NO!” in the face of human progress. Ah, but what about the nostalgic emotions that these garments evoke, you ask? To which I respond: Seriously? Making ugly clothes and dressing them up in nostalgic marketing doesn’t change the fact that they’re butt-ugly. Besides, when did you ever see anybody in history wearing clothes as ill-conceived as these? That’s right, never.

“Look at all the lovely pastels on that shirt!”

Brooks Brothers: go back to sleep. Stick with the tan khakis and blue blazers and just please for the love of all that is beautiful in this world, stop making anything else.

Since Sunday, hundreds of evacuees from New Orleans have arrived in Lake Providence and the surrounding area. They can’t get to Red Cross shelters in Monroe, the nearest city; they are out of gas and money and energy. Providence Church has emerged as a shelter not because the town planned it, but because evacuees stopped at the church and stayed.

The most immediate priority is to buy toiletries and water, and help get some of these evacuees to Red Cross shelters in Monroe, the nearest city. Some of them will end up staying, though, and will need help getting settled and getting their children into local schools.

Brendan’s a trustworthy person who will take the funds raised directly down there personally this coming weekend. I encourage you to participate by sending funds using the paypal link on his website.